“An integral part of my business is to create and cultivate positive, meaningful, supportive relationships with everybody from my clients to my colleagues, people I’m renting space from, potential clients, etc. It’s important to me that my actions demonstrate my values that every person and every body deserves love, respect, and care.”

“There’s an annoying song that’s only playing all the way through all day long on some days. Others, I can barely hear the chorus, and others I can’t hear it all. But every day, I know that that song will be there again one day, maybe even tomorrow, maybe even later that same day. And I hate this song.”

“My brain is lit like the map of a major metropolis at night. My body is, too. ‘I am at one with a sea of sensations, glitter, silk, skin, eyes, mouths, desire,’ Anaïs Nin wrote, and that’s pretty much it. Or, put another way: I have found an affirmation of selfhood, and I haven’t thought to immediately annul it.”

If you wait until your girlfriend with body issues is feeing just really attractive and good about herself to approach the idea of sex, you are, sooner or later, going to stop having sex together. Period.

“This is the root of the problem with fat shamers such as Kelsey. They are not worried about the health of others, they are angry that they must worry and we do not. They are people who fear becoming fat, have been fat or feel fat right now and can’t stand that there are fat people in the world that seem carefree. Don’t you know you are disgusting!!?!?!? You’re supposed to be unhappy being fat!! That’s why I work so hard to stay thin; because fat people should be unhappy!!! WHY CAN’T I HAVE MORE MCDONALDS??? The reason I know this is because I was one of these people for a very long time.”

As a teenager, I reeled from the shift in the how society now viewed me: as a collection of body parts for anyone and everyone to comment on. Today, watching my teenage sister on social media gives me hope.

“The work I do is all about how we make peace with the body, our own and other people’s bodies. I can’t have that conversation without talking about my queerness, or my blackness, or my size, or my mental health, or trans issues, or disability. It’s about everybody’s right to be on this planet.”

Exploring 40 different artist’s feelings and experiences about their bodies and gender, the zine “Every/Body” has stories and comics ranging from the touching and tragic, to the inspiring and uplifting.